


leave no trace

by rangerhitomi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: M/M, park ranger au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2545325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it’s cold, and ranger durbe has hypothermia, and ranger nasch is kind of ticked because it’s snowing and freezing and he has to pack around durbe’s semi-conscious body because durbe’s not very good at practicing leave no trace ethics today</p>
            </blockquote>





	leave no trace

He could hardly see two feet in front of him; the frigid wind nearly bowled him over as he stumbled through the knee-deep snow, dragging his half-conscious partner along on his back. Each gust of wind blew shards of ice into his skin. Each breath made his lungs burn. Each step over the compacted snow made him slip on the icy rocks concealed underneath.

“Almost there,” he tried to say, but the wind swallowed his voice and he didn’t even know where they were even if his partner could have heard him.

_“Poachers?” Durbe looked up from the computer. “Why can’t the wildlife management team deal with it?”_

_Nasch sighed. “Short staffed since three of them contracted food poisoning and one broke his arm. Plus,” he said with a wry smile, “we’re the trained law enforcement rangers, remember?”_

_Durbe glanced at the weather radar. It had been below freezing all week and it looked like a snowstorm was moving in. “I’m reasonably sure this would be a ‘red’ on the GAR.”_

_Nasch shrugged dismissively. “To preserve and protect, right? We have to preserve and protect our wildlife from poachers. Neither of us would be able to sleep knowing we kept some stupid government safety chart from upholding our oaths.”_

_Durbe sighed. “We’d better get serious hazard pay for this.”_

He worked his numb fingers toward the radio at his waist. He’d been entirely unsuccessful for the past hour, but they were climbing higher, so maybe… “Dispatch, this is one-oh-one.”

The radio beeped and the static silenced. Nasch bit back a curse. Of all times for the radio to die, it had to be now.

“Nasch…”

“Durbe?” Ahead, Nasch spotted a small alcove, sheltered from the snow. “Thank God. I’m trying to get us out of the-”

“Gotta… get the poachers… out of park… worth the risk…”

 _It’s not worth it if you die of hypothermia_ , Nasch thought grimly as Durbe’s weight fell heavily on his back again. He continued to move toward the alcove. If he could keep Durbe talking and conscious, they could do this until Search and Rescue could send out a patrol when it was safe.

They’d been successful in locating the poachers and could have made the arrests with no real difficulty, if only the poachers had decided not to start shooting at them. Durbe lost his footing in an attempt to find cover from the shotgun blasts –  _the only weapon you’re allowed to have in the park is a concealed handgun_ , he’d yelled – and ended up tumbling down the steeply graded hill they had climbed in order to reach the poachers in the first place. Nasch followed the other ranger, sliding as quickly as he could through the snow, as he radioed in their location and the situation and requested backup. The garbled voice on the other end acknowledged him before cutting out in a haze of static.

Durbe’s ankle looked sprained, maybe even broken, and his head was bleeding from where he must have hit it on the way down. Nasch administered the quickest first-aid he could to stifle the blood but he knew he would not be able to carry Durbe, Durbe’s pack, and his own pack anywhere. So he left his own pack behind, pulled Durbe on his back, and grimaced at the extra twenty pounds of weight from Durbe’s pack.

Now they were wandering around without any idea of where they were because the fall had disoriented Nasch’s sense of direction, he couldn’t see any prominent landmarks or trailmarkers, and his compass was missing. To top it all off, Durbe was slipping in and out of consciousness. But they finally reached the alcove, which was semi-sheltered from the bitter wind and the worst of the snow. After a quick check for wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and bears (or any other vicious and angry sleeping predator) and finding it clear, he set Durbe against the wall and pulled off the pack.

“I can’t believe you yelled regulations at them when they started shooting,” Nasch said in an attempt to ensure Durbe was still awake.

“The only weapon’s a licensed and concealed handgun in the park,” Durbe muttered. Now that Nasch was close up, he could see Durbe’s pale lips and purple fingernails. Even the blood on the back of his head was beginning to freeze.

“You’re a nerd.” Nasch dug around in Durbe’s pack for the first aid kit.

“Am not.” Durbe closed his eyes.

“Uh-uh, don’t you fall asleep on me,” Nasch warned, rapping Durbe’s face sharply until Durbe’s gray eyes focused hazily on him. “Look at me, Durbe. More regulations. Tell me all the protocols you know about concealed firearms.”

“You’ll just call… me a nerd again…” Durbe’s eyes fluttered and Nasch placed his hand on his cheek to keep Durbe’s gaze on him. Even to Nasch’s cold fingers, Durbe’s skin seemed icy.

“You’re damn right I will. You’re a huge ass nerd, Durbe.” There was nothing in the first aid kit to help with hypothermia aside from an emergency blanket, which Nasch immediately wrapped around Durbe’s upper body. “Nobody else in the entire park knows as much as you do about those stupid regulations. Hell, you probably know more about them than the director of the entire  _service_  does.”

Durbe’s pale lips moved, but the sound of his voice was muffled. Nasch leaned closer, until he could practically feel his own heat being sapped by Durbe.

“What?”

Durbe took a deep breath and closed his eyes again. “Blanket… conserves body heat, Nasch. I don’t… body heat…”

Of course; the reason it felt like Durbe was sapping Nasch’s body heat was because… well, he  _was_  sapping Nasch’s body heat. His body was slowly freezing and it was trying to find any source to warm up.

“Yeah, yeah, okay, tell me about firearms in federal buildings.” Nasch’s numbing fingers dug through Durbe’s pack for the lightweight sleeping bag he knew Durbe always kept in his SAR pack.

“Bad,” Durbe said blearily. He was starting to drift off again.

“Hey, stay awake, Durbe. Don’t go to sleep.” Nasch’s heart pounded as he dug through the pack. His fingers finally latched onto a small, oblong package in the bottom.  _About goddamn time._ He pulled the sleeping bag out of its pack and shook it out, laying it on the frozen ground. “I want you to climb in this and I’ll start a fire.”

Durbe obediently allowed Nasch to help him into the sleeping bag, flinching when Nasch accidentally bumped his injured and badly wrapped ankle. “No campfires in the backcountry.”

Nasch looked at him incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not good Leave No Trace ethics,” Durbe said with a hint of apology in his pale face.

Of all times for Durbe to insist on Nasch following regulations, it had to be when he was dying of hypothermia. “Yeah, well, leaving your body here isn’t good Leave No Trace ethics either. You packed your sorry ass in, you’re going to be the one to pack it out, ‘cause I’m  _not_  doing it for you.”

Durbe made a wheezing sound that Nasch thought might have been a laugh. “Freezing, Nasch.”

“I know, I  _know_.” Durbe, fittingly for a regulations purist, had no fire starting supplies in his pack other than a lighter, which was useless without anything _to_  light, so Nasch muttered a curse and pulled out the miniature camp stove. “Damn it, Durbe, why don’t you have Vaseline-soaked cotton balls in here for emergencies?”

“No fires-”

“-in the backcountry, yeah, I get it.” Nasch blew out a frustrated breath and lit the camp stove. Its heat was marginal, but maybe Nasch could warm some water and force Durbe to drink it. “You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?”

Durbe smiled weakly and leaned his head against the sleeping bag. He was no longer shivering, and Nasch’s heart pounded. Durbe’s body was probably not able to muster enough energy to warm itself any longer. “Hey, Nasch… if…”

“Don’t ‘if’ me, Durbe.”

“It’s important.”

“It can wait,” Nasch said through gritted teeth, scooping some snow into a canister.

“No.”

“Yes.” Nasch plopped the canister on top of the camp stove. “Don’t argue with me, Durbe. I have seniority.”

Durbe muttered something that sounded a bit like “we left the Academy at the same time,” but his head lolled, eyes closing again. “Nasch,” he tried again, lips barely moving, “it’s so cold.”

Even sheltered from the worst of the wind and snow by the alcove, snow still drifted in, settling on top of Durbe’s sleeping bag, and they were not insulated from the bitter chill in the air. Nor was Durbe protected from the frozen earth beneath him pushing the cold into his sleeping bag, which was made for maybe twenty degree weather. This had to be well below zero with the wind chill factor. Nasch willed the water to heat faster, but it wasn’t as though he had any power over the laws of endothermic physics.

If Durbe fell asleep now, he might not wake up.

“The others had better get a hold of those damn poachers or I’m going to be _really_  pissed,” Nasch muttered, sticking a finger in the canister. The water was still far from hot, but it was somewhat warm, and that would have to be good enough. “Hey Durbe, I need you to drink this for me.”

There was no response.

“Damn it, damn it,  _damn it_.” Nasch set the cup back on the stove and reached for Durbe’s face. “Hey, don’t go to sleep yet. We’re not done catching the bad guys.” There was still no response, and Nasch squeezed his eyes shut. There was one option left to him, since Durbe was no longer physically capable of warming himself. It wasn’t  _desirable,_  really, but if it would save his best friend’s life…

With a series of muttered cursed, Nasch turned off the stove and fumbled to unzip his coat as he climbed into the too-small sleeping bag with Durbe. It was incredibly constricting; the bag had been made for one person, and even though neither of them was particularly  _large_ , it was still a tight fit. Nasch struggled with the zipper on the sleeping bag next as he pulled it closed over their heads, ignoring the fact that he was pressed intimately close to the other ranger. Much closer than he had ever wanted to be. And Durbe’s lips were close. So close Nasch could feel the warm air he expelled tickling his neck.

And he told the voice in his head that reminded him that  _you have, in fact, wanted to be pretty damn close to Durbe’s body in the past_ that he had probably been drunk during said times.

“I’m saving your life, you asshole,” Nasch muttered, and wrapped his arms around Durbe’s icy body.

* * *

When Durbe opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was that the air was stuffy; he was tightly enclosed in a sleeping bag. The next was that Nasch’s arms were wrapped around him, pulling their bodies entirely too close together.

He fought down a momentary spike of horror – he couldn’t remember much other than that it was frigid the night before and, yes, there it was, his ankle was sprained – and he certainly didn’t remember Nasch crawling into the sleeping bag with him. They both seemed to be fully clothed, though Nasch’s coat was draped on top of the sleeping bag, so there was  _that_. But Durbe could feel one thing on Nasch’s end that he was sure wasn’t part of the first aid for hypothermia.

When he shifted cautiously away – as far as the sleeping bag would permit, anyway – Nasch let out a quiet sigh and blinked open his eyes.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“You sound surprised.”

“Just glad.”

Durbe cleared his throat quietly. “Yeah, I… I noticed.”

There was dead silence for about five seconds before Nasch moved violently to unzip the sleeping bag, succeeding only in creating more friction, until he finally managed to crawl out, swearing under his breath all the while. His face was bright red, though Durbe’s probably matched, and they avoided looking at each other while Durbe struggled to remove himself from the sleeping bag as well. It had finally stopped snowing, and the weak sunlight shined on the rock overhang. His ankle throbbed, and he wanted to laugh at the fact that Search and Rescue would apply a cold pack to it when he had probably almost died of hypothermia and was surrounded by ice and snow. But his head hurt too much for him to find amusement in it for long.

“Here, drink this.” Nasch thrust out a cup of steaming liquid, still not looking at Durbe, and Durbe took the hot cup. It felt nice on his cold hands.

“I generally drink my coffee with some actual coffee in it,” he supplied helpfully, peering at the lightly steaming water.

Nasch was busy shoving things back in the pack. “It’s probably about five miles back to headquarters, so you’re welcome to go get some.”

Durbe nodded, watching Nasch cram the camp stove and the sleeping bag – without rolling the sleeping bag up, of course – into the pack. “You know, it’s going to take up more space just hurling it in there.”

“Thank you for your input.”

With a shrug, Durbe put the cup to his lips and sipped the hot water. It was about as tasty as hot water could ever be – that is to say, not at all – but it filled his chest and stomach with warmth. He watched Nasch for a little longer and wondered when a good time would be to offer his help, but if Nasch thought he was just going to forget about their sleeping arrangements and the fact that Nasch had woken up with the flagpole raised, he was dead wrong.

“So,” he said, smiling into his half-full cup of hot water, “did you know that the best method of heat transfer when dealing with hypothermia is for both parties to be fully unclothed in the sleeping bag?”

It was almost worth Nasch throwing a spoon at Durbe’s forehead just to see how red Nasch’s face could get. 


End file.
